Never to blend our pleasure or our pride
With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels.”
(“Hart-Leap Well.”)
VI.
1.—“... prehistoric hour.”
“The preface of general history must be compiled from the materials presented by barbarism. Happily, if we may say so, these materials are abundant. So unequally has the species been developed, that almost every conceivable phase of progress may be studied, as somewhere observed and recorded. And thus the philosopher, fenced from mistake as to the order of development, by the inter-connection of the stages and their shadings into one another by gentle gradations, may draw a clear and decided outline of the course of human progress in times long antecedent to those to which even philology can make reference.”—M’Lennan (“Primitive Marriage,” p. 9)....
Id.... “I will confine myself to these examples, gleaned from all parts, and which it would be easy to multiply. They amply suffice to establish that, in primitive societies, woman, being held in very low esteem, is absolutely reduced to the level of chattels and of domestic animals; that she represents a booty like any other; that her master can use and abuse her without fear. But in these bestial practices there is nothing which approaches even distantly to marriage, and we are not in the least warranted to call these brutal rapes marriages.”—Letourneau (“Evolution of Marriage,” Chap. VI.).
2.—“... woman thrall ...”
“Woman was the first human being that tasted bondage. Woman was a slave before the slave existed.”—August Bebel (“Woman,” Chap. I.).
Id.... “From the very earliest twilight of human society, every woman (owing to the value attached to her by man, combined with her inferiority in muscular strength) was found in a state of bondage to some man.”—J. S. Mill (“The Subjection of Woman,” Chap. I.).